Parent in prison puts child in trouble

Monday

Nov 30, 2009 at 12:01 AMNov 30, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Mary Smith’s 12-year-old son likes to skateboard and build model airplanes. He wants an MP3 player for Christmas. He fidgets when he’s nervous. And, like other children, he has to live with his parents’ decisions; even if those choices are wrong, or worse, if they are horrible and cause him pain. His father is in jail.

Deborah Straszheim

Mary Smith’s 12-year-old son likes to skateboard and build model airplanes. He wants an MP3 player for Christmas. He fidgets when he’s nervous.

And, like other children, he has to live with his parents’ decisions; even if those choices are wrong, or worse, if they are horrible and cause him pain.

His father is in jail.

He’s an alcoholic, and he was charged with attempted murder in February in the stabbing of a relative. Smith, a resident of northern New London County in Connecticut, had to tell her son his father did something awful. (The Bulletin has changed her name and omitted her hometown to protect the identities of her and her son.)

“He started crying,” Smith said of her son. “He just started crying.” She said he doesn’t want to see his father.

His suffering is one that many children know — having a parent in prison.

Few programs

“There are (almost) no programs to help these children,” said Joseph Petroff, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southeastern Connecticut, which started a program to match the children of prisoners with mentors. “That’s why we’re needed.”

Those who work with children in families broken by substance abuse, violence and prison said the children need community support to make it through a devastating time in their lives and become productive citizens.

Children of Promise, which started informally in 2006 and obtained funding in July 2008, grew out of a request by the Department of Correction to try to stop the cycle of incarceration. It serves about a dozen children in southeastern Connecticut; Petroff hopes to add 38 children this year.

The agency received $50,000 last year and will get about $40,000 this year. Big Brother Big Sister agencies in western Connecticut and the Hartford area also have started programs.

Petroff said he’d help more kids if he could. He can’t always find them.

Poverty and isolation

Unlike other struggling families that take advantage of social and community help, those with a parent in prison often do not. Children are afraid to reveal their situation, so they hide it, lie or change the subject.

Or they don’t know; they’re told dad is away, at college or on vacation.

“It’s not a thing you get a lot of public support for, such as if you lose a parent to death or divorce,” said Susan Quinlan, executive director of Families in Crisis Inc. “There are certain social norms. A child’s not going to go to school and say, ‘I’m having trouble because I’m worried about my dad. He’s in jail.’”

Families in Crisis is a nonprofit statewide agency that assists families with a member in prison.

Yet the children may desperately need assistance. If the parent in jail was a wage earner, the family may be launched into poverty. The remaining parent may not have a reliable car; the incarcerated parent may be jailed hours from the family, or the caretaker may be unwilling or unable to pay for gas so the child can visit, and the loss of contact is sudden and extensive.

The family — and by extension, the children — also often struggle with drug or alcohol abuse, or a mental health problem that led to the parent’s incarceration in the first place.

Quinlan said children in these circumstances can be reached, even if it is not easy.

“We know where they are. They’re in our prison visiting rooms,” she said. “They’re in our courts on sentencing days.”

A national issue

As of 2007 — the latest data available — 1.7 million children younger than 18 had a parent in prison, an increase of 82 percent from 1991, according to The Sentencing Project, a national, nonprofit research and advocacy group on criminal justice issues.

“We now have significant numbers of children who are growing up with the experience of having an incarcerated parent at least for some portion of their growing years,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the project, based in Washington.

The Justice Department doesn’t compile data on children of incarcerated parents often; it costs money, and there’s little attention or interest in it, he said.

‘Never had his father’

Smith, 31, lives with her only child and her boyfriend.

She grew up in Ohio and moved to Connecticut to live with her dad. She dropped out of a local high school, had her son at 19 and had a relationship with her son’s father on and off for 10 years.

He drank.

“Pretty much, I was just scared,” she said.

Her ex-husband, whose name also is being withheld to protect the child’s identity, was arrested the first time when their child was 4 months old. Every weekend for the next three years, the child rode in the car with his mother or grandparents to visit his father in jail.

His father went to Corrigan, but was transferred through the prison system six times. The child visited his dad wherever he was.

Smith moved in with her ex-husband’s parents and started working at Foxwoods Resort Casino at first, then got an apartment in Norwich with her son.

“It was always just me and him,” she said. “He never bonded with anybody but me. He never had his father growing up.”

The man was released from jail on his son’s 3rd birthday.

Smith said her ex-husband promised he’d be a good boyfriend and father when he got out. And for a while, she said he was.

Then he fathered a child with another woman. That child also lives in Eastern Connecticut. Smith returned to Ohio, and later, the couple tried again.

They married in 2005. But the drinking returned, and they eventually divorced.

Smith’s ex-husband is accused of stabbing a relative several times while drunk in February. He has pleaded not guilty.

“My son knows everything,” Smith said. “Sometimes I feel like I should shelter him from things, but he’s seen so many things in his life.”

She said her boyfriend helps fill the father’s role.

The boy struggles in school. He’s behind in math, social studies and science, and needs a tutor, Smith said. He loves outdoor activities like skateboarding and football.

What he needs, she said, is “just a happy family. People that love him and care for him and want the best for him.”

She hopes he’ll be OK as he gets older.

“He’s a very smart boy,” she said. “Sometimes he has trouble with concentration, but I hope he makes the right decisions. I will help him as much as I can.”

What children want

Beth Merenstein, associate professor of sociology at Central Connecticut State University, is part of a team evaluating programs for children of incarcerated parents by Big Brothers Big Sisters and Families in Crisis.

The Legislature asked the university’s Institute for Municipal Region and Policy to assemble the group of researchers. Their preliminary report is due next month.

Merenstein interviewed 10 children, ages 7 to 16. She asked questions such as, “What is the best thing that could happen to you now?”

“Most people in the field think that the answer would be better resources,” she said. “More money for my family. But in fact, almost all of (the children) answer, ‘For my parent to get out of jail.’”

The worst thing children report about their lives is having the parent — usually the father — gone and not being able to visit, and seeing other children with their dad, she said. Merenstein also interviewed children’s caretakers individually and mentors in groups.

While she said mentoring helps, it’s not a substitute for a parent, even one in jail.

“We see this person as a convicted drug dealer. But the kids just see their father,” she said.

Generations in prison

Those in corrections say a child with a parent in jail is six to seven times more likely to end up in prison himself. It’s unclear where the statistics — often quoted in interviews — come from, and how reliable they are.

The Department of Correction doesn’t keep data on the number of families with generations in jail. But anecdotally, they said they’re seeing this more today than 10 years ago, as inmates have become younger, crimes more violent and sentences longer.

Coletti, warden of Corrigan-Radgowski and a former Norwich police officer, said the public often focuses on recidivism, or keeping inmates from returning to prison once they leave. He believes they also need to look at the familial aspect of jail, and ways to reach the next generation.

He estimated that about 30 percent of the prisoners at Corrigan-Radgowski have an immediate relative serving time.

He’s seen the damage of having a family member in prison. About 25 years ago, he arrested a former high school classmate for assault and booked him at the Norwich police station. They were both in their 20s.

Fast-forward to about a year ago. Coletti, now 49, was walking through the prison housing area looking at who was new. He saw a name and instantly recognized it.

“I went to school with him, I arrested him, I haven’t seen him in years,” he said.

He walked to the cell, expecting someone about his age.

A man about 20 looked up. Coletti asked if there was any relation.

The young man said it was his dad, and he had died.

Norwich Bulletin

By the numbers

In 2007:

1.7 million children younger than 18 had a parent in prison, an 82 percent increase from 1991.

809,800 parents were in U.S. federal or state prisons that year, an increase of 79 percent since 1991.

52 percent of all incarcerated men and women were parents. Two-thirds of parents in prison were non-white.

122 percent: The rise in the number of mothers in prison from 1991 to 2007, compared to an increase of 76 percent for incarcerated fathers.

Source: February 2009 report, Incarcerated Parents and Their Children, Trends 1991-2007, The Sentencing Project, national nonprofit research and advocacy group on criminal justice issues

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